Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+: Radeon can be quiet too

Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+ in detail

We start our mid-range Radeon 7000 tests with a more powerful model with a fully enabled Navi 32 GPU. The RX 7800 XT is mainly a competitor to the GeForce RTX 4070, which is a more expensive but also lower-power (and efficient) graphics card. However, Sapphire handled the relatively higher power draw exceedingly well, and if you have experience with “noisier Radeons”, that won’t be the case with the RX 7800 XT Nitro+ at all.

Conclusion

Speed-wise, the RX 7800 XT is about on par with the RX 6900 XT from last generation for gaming. In a comparison of the Sapphire Nitro+ (RX 7800 XT) and Sapphire Toxic LE (RX 6900 XT) models, the newer of the Radeons has a slight advantage (up to 5%) in the lower resolutions in a cross-section of all games (without ray tracing graphics), but in higher, UHD resolution, it lags behind a little (about 3%). But that’s always with significantly lower power draw and around 32% more efficiency.

A more important comparison than that with outgoing graphics cards is against the GeForce RTX 4070. Radeon’s average non-RT gaming performance is about 5–10% higher, with the fact that the higher the resolution, the more the RX 7800 XT’s lead grows. But this is true in the case of a non-RT setup. With the use of ray tracing, the RTX 4070 already has the upper hand virtually in every case, and it’s just a question of by how much.

In games with undemanding RT graphics, which include Shadow of the Tomb Raider, for example, the difference can be quite small and the frame rate is still comparable, although Radeon lags behind slightly.In the original Metro Exodus, even results are achieved, but only in 2160p. But that’s at a level that in both cases (with both the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070) is already outside the comfortable limit (with averages of about 42 fps and drops to 27–29 fps). At 1080p, where the RTX 4070 is closer to the 7800 XT with pure rasterization as well, the difference is already 21%. And in the RT-heavy Cyberpunk 2077 for example, it’s as much as 35% to the disadvantage of the RX 7800 XT. In Control it’s around 15% in terms of average fps, but with a significant drop in minimums. Those are roughly 30% larger with the RX 7800 XT. Radeon noticeably lags behind even in Battlefield V. The ray-tracing gaming experience is noticeably better on the RTX 4070. But the RX 7800 XT can be quite a bit more attractive speed-wise where RT graphics aren’t counted on. In terms of pure gaming performance, Radeon RX 7800 XT has a significant edge in titles such asBorderlands 3, Control, Red Dead Redemption 2 or Total War Saga: Troy. In most games, the results are remarkably even, whether it is Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Battlefield V, DOOM Eternal, FIFA (21), F1 2020, Forza Horizon 4, Mafia: DE, Metro Exodus, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Wasteland 3.

The clear disadvantage of the RX 7800 XT is always that it has significantly higher power draw. The difference for comparable gaming performance is up to around 100W compared to the RTX 4070. While the efficiency (gaming performance per watt) of the RTX 4070 is top notch, the RX 7800 XT is only average or maybe even below average, judge by the efficiency coefficient yourself. Sure, there’s an improvement over the previous RDNA 2 generation, but the difference behind Ada Lovelace with similar gaming performance is really significant. Even The RTX 4080 is better in that regard, and only the RTX 4090 worse. But that’s a whole other performance class that pushes the limit of Nvidia’s GPUs’ technical capabilities.

In idle (even with multiple monitors or a monitor combining high resolution with a high refresh rate), the Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+ is a lower power card than the Asus RTX 4070. On the web with GPU-accelerated browsing or video playback, the situation is reversed and the RX 7800 XT can draw twice as much power (approx. 40 vs. 20 W).

What about compute performance in a work environment? In CUDA-optimized applications, the RTX 4070 usually has the edge, and for example, in Blender (with the Cycles renderer) the RX 7800 XT with OpenCL only reaches half the speed. After taking into account the possibility of acceleration by tensor cores (under the OptiX API), you can’t compare the Radeon at all anymore, it’s dramatically slower. When both cards are under OpenCL, the results are already closer together and the difference is in the range of single digits of percent, though the RX 7800 XT is usually still the weaker option. Also comparable is GPU acceleration in Photoshop, where for most filters Radeon even takes the initiative and is more nimble. However, the RX 7800 XT isn’t really suited to the alternative Affinity Photo for a change. But then again, it collects plus points under OpenGL (and DirectX) in engineering applications for 3D modelling, such as CATIA, Creo, and on top, though less so, in SolidWorks. It depends on what one works in.

In terms of noise, the Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+ is a super-quiet graphics card for a Radeon in this performance class, and overall it ranks among the quietest we’ve tested in recent years. Even the coils don’t spoil the acoustic performance of the solid cooler too much. They may not be difficult to overhear for demanding users, but it’s nothing terrible, and the tonal peaks are quite low. Quieter operation of the cooler does not mean higher temperatures. They are, on the contrary, quite low and GPU clock speeds are still high. In games under load between 2463–2567 MHz, which is far above the value Sapphire declares for gaming boost (2254 MHz).

Due to the first-class design with the really efficient cooler and with the favourable price/performance ratio, we give the Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+ the editorial award „Smart buy!“. Naturally, given some of the aspects we have already covered in the evaluation, it may not be the right choice for everyone. But those who can live with the weaker RT performance, worse power efficiency and no support for Nvidia DLSS or CUDA at the expense of a lower price will be satisfied. That is, assuming they can fit such a large graphics card into the case and it won’t interfere with anything.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

For cooperation in providing the tested hardware, we would like to give special thanks to the Datacomp e-shop

• Contents
• Sapphire RX 7800 XT Nitro+ in detail
• Table of parameters
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: noise and sound measurement
• Methodology: temperature tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Age of Empires II: DE
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Battlefield V
• Battlefield V with DXR
• Borderlands 3
• Control
• Control with DXR
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Cyberpunk 2077 with DXR
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• FIFA 21
• Forza Horizon 4
• Mafia: DE
• Metro Exodus
• Metro Exodus with DXR
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (Dx12)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider with DXR
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Wasteland 3
• Overall gaming performance and performance per euro
• CompuBench (OpenCL)
• SPECviewperf 2020 and SPECworkstation 3
• FLOPS, IOPS and memory speed tests
• 3D rendering 1/2 (LuxMark and Blender@Cycles)
• 3D rendering 2/2 (Blender@Radeon ProRender and Eevee)
• Photo editing (Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo)
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Password cracking
• GPU clock speed
• GPU and VRAM temperatures
• Net graphics card power draw and performance per watt
• Analysis of 12 V branch power supply (higher load)
• Analysis of 12 V branch power supply (lower load)
• Analysis of 3.3 V branch power supply
• Noise level
• Frequency response of sound
• Conclusion